Tag Archives: pruning boxwood hedges

A Wet Spring…

18 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by in Bill Noble, Drying Garden, Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver, Spring, spring annuals

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I was in the garden today…dodging raindrops on the way into a meeting…and I reflected on how beautiful this garden is…even on the very dreariest of wet spring days…

I noted some boxwood trimming had begun…

the pergola construction was well underway…

making us glad that this structure will be there providing shade next summer…like it did last summer…and for many summers to come…

the rain has helped the new lawn in the drying garden flourish…

and once inside…the fire was going and Bobbie was welcoming Bill Noble to the meeting.

Bill is here in Oregon lecturing on the Cornish Colony in New Hampshire.  His lecture in Salem is this coming Sunday (March 19th) at 2:00 in the Dye House at the Willamette Heritage Center.    I KNOW you won’t want to miss this one.   Bill formerly was with the Garden Conservancy and now works as a consultant to many famous gardens, including our own.  He is a knowledgeable and lively person, pictured like this for publicity purposes…

and here are my meeting notes…

but today we had a little fun…

See you Sunday!

November News…

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver, Pruning

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We entered the garden through the back gate today, late in the afternoon, and there was a meeting going on so the lights were all on and the house looked inviting…

lights on

A walk through Gaiety Hollow this blustery afternoon revealed that MUCH work has been done in my absence…volunteers have finished trimming all the boxwood and it looks very good, even on a dark, wet and dreary day…

alle looking north (1)

-25

Elwood’s Tree Service has done some professional trimming (best done by somebody nimble on the top of a ladder)-26

-28

-4

-7

and the holly hedge is amazing…-27

-39

holly 1

holly 2

There has been lots of planting…two white lilacs…

Lilaclilac 2

a crab apple…

crabapple

and a beautifully shaped Japanese maple near the house…

Japanese maple

a small holly near the back porch…

-41-42-40

lights on (1)

always more to do though…foundation plantings…

foundation

and then the wear and tear of time and weather always brings new projects…

fence 1 (1)

fence 2 (1)

but in spite of the wind and rain, this garden always makes me happy…and now beginning to feel festive…!

skimmia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October in the Garden…

07 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Uncategorized, Vintage Photos

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Fall is here, but the zinnias are still going strong!

profusion of z's

zinnias

Last weekend we were hosting the meeting of the Pacific Northwest regional affiliates with the national Garden Conservancy…a chance for them to take a road trip and see what is really happening in our garden.  It’s always fun to welcome new people to Gaiety Hollow and its delights, but in preparation for the Saturday workshop, the Friday crew was doing a little seasonal pruning and hedge-trimming:

on the lawn

David

Bobbie

Shirley’s clippers looked light-weight and sharp…

Shirley 2

the familiar garden views still delight…

view through arbor with Jay tools tidying up

and the next project up will be re-plumbing the fountain and getting it in working order…

next project (1)

Correspondent Woody Dukes sent along this vintage photo of the urn when it was in the scroll garden at Deepwood…and then a photo of the urn in it’s new location…

Note ivy cut-out in terrace.

urn 1

Now we’re just waiting for some fall rain!

Aegopodium

07 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Uncategorized

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Eek…a nasty word that…aegopodium.  A native of Europe and Asia, often called Bishop’s weed/ground elder/goutweed…this plant is regarded as an ecological threat.  It is AGGRESSIVE and INVASIVE, and reduces species diversity in the ground layer.  In other words, you don’t want it in your garden.  It has long white branching rhizomes underground that go everywhere.  EVERYWHERE.  When I was in the garden early in the summer it looked like this…

aegopodium

 

You might almost think it was pretty, with the little white flowers…until you began to notice it was EVERYWHERE…

augopodium 2

with the volunteer gardeners bravely waging war against it…

weeder

gairty Hollow weeds 1

The other day I was in the garden and was amazed to see that MUCH aegopodium had been removed, with newspaper put down and mulch on top to keep it down…

mulch 1

mulch 3mulch 4

mulch 2

fingers crossed!  But on the brighter side…the boxwood is back!!

return of the boxwood

and the new bench looks great!

the new bench

 

 

Boxwood Pruning Complete!

07 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Uncategorized

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In the garden today, amazed at the pruning, the open lightness of everything…thought you might like to see the progress…!

prune 2 prune 1

Before…

next up

After…

after 1

Before:

before 5

After…

tulip[s

Before…

before 6

After…

after 2

Before….

espaliered before

kitchen entrance

A beautiful place to be on a spring morning…

camellias + tulps 2 last

Consider joining us Saturday, April 12, 2014, 5:30 to 7:00 pm, for Music and Martinis!  Come see the refurbished interior, enjoy appetizers and drinks by Alcyone Cafe, and contribute $25 per person to this most amazing effort.  Reservations and tickets available on line at http://www.lord-schryverconservancy.org/…see you Saturday!

BOXWOOD!!

21 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Uncategorized

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Have you ever trimmed boxwood?  It’s back-breaking work, but work that makes all the difference in a formal garden.  I have trimmed boxwood, so was especially delighted to meet master trimmer Darin Baier at Gaiety Hollow this morning…and he let me watch him work (and gave me a few pointers!).  When I arrived I was absolutely amazed and delighted at the progress since last week…

Box 1

Box 3

box 4

Darin had just finished trimming, at Gretchen Carnaby’s direction, the hedges to 20 inches and the balls to 28…

measuring

…oops…he said he really needed to make the hedges 18 and the balls 26 inches so when they got a little growth they would be PERFECT!  Out came the big hedge trimmer and he was off and running…

cut 1cut 2cut 3

It’s always a pleasure to be in the garden and today I appreciated anew the remaining old oak…

oak

and more trimming…

faucetcloseup

Darin thought MAYBE he’d have enough stamina to get to this section of hedge today…we’ll see…he says each section is an adventure!

next up

Camellias, Boxwood and the Renovation

15 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, House, Lord & Schryver

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When I got to the garden today the crew was just finishing up the Friday morning work party…trying to rid the garden of “invasives”…a thankless task…

goodbye invasives

and I checked the boxwoods…the severe pruning has begun…

radical trim

but you can see from this view of the unpruned on the left, recently pruned on the right, that this will be the right thing to do…

both

and then the camellias are all in bloom…

c 4c 3c 2

c 6C 1c 5

…a quick check of the new tree…

new tree

and then I headed inside where the renovations are almost complete.  The former living room has become the meeting room…

inside 2

inside 1

the dining rooms views remain the best in the house…

dining rooom 1dining room 3dining room 2

and upstairs, the room over the garage that was Lord and Schryver’s office will become the “library”/”archive” room…

LIBRARY 3LIBRARY 1LIBRARY 2

and the carpet has been removed from the stairs…

taIRAS

A quick fond view…

last

and I was off.  Next time: the removal of the front sidewalk…will the trees live??

 

 

 

The Garden Comes Back to Life!

28 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by in Gaiety Hollow, Garden, Lord & Schryver, Uncategorized

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Gaiety Hollow is an old garden, as you know.  The lovely small hedges and decorative trees have become huge, so the problem of scale is now on the agenda…big time!  The problem becomes how to strike a balance between the original intent when the garden was planted, and the fact of maturity in an historic garden.  It took Darin 12 hours to prune the massively overgrown hedges at the front of the house.  He saved some sections for infill and when we got there today Gretchen Carnaby, David Lichter and Joyce Zook were hard at work…take a look…

hedges 3

hedges 4

hedges 2

blue wheelbarrowhedges 4.5hedges 5

hedges Joyce

He didn’t prune the inside of the hedges…Gretchen said next year or the year after for that…when the street-side has filled out…

Hedges 1

but the BIG news for today was the arrival and planting of the new white oak to replace the fallen giant, the donation of John Miller.  Adam volunteered to work on digging the chips from the old oak out of the dirt left in the hole.  Any chips of the old tree will rob nitrogen from the new tree and retard healthy growth…

Adam 1

David and Joyce jumped in to help, along with arborist Woody Dukes assessing the chip-to-dirt ratio… (it looked a little like a needle in a haystack…)

chip removal

COFFEE BREAK!

equipment

coffee break

(I DIDN’T get a shot of the Townsend’s Warbler with it’s nose in the camellia)

camellia

Woody pointed out the snow damage in the camellias…

snow damage

and worse yet, the squirrel damage.  The squirrels are killing off the tops of various camellias by girdling the trees to eat the bark.  Look just above Woody’s finger and you can see where the bark has been gnawed off…

squirrel damage

just below the stripped trunk is a strong shoot in healthy bark, so in due course Woody will remove the now yellowed and dying top and the new shoot will fill in.

Gretchen pointed out to me one of the next projects…an espaliered camellia that is very overgrown, and is going to be massively pruned…here it is today, with Gretchen’s note that it has a strong interior structure…so stay tuned for the results…

future prune

interior

On our way out we checked the new little white oak, waiting to be planted…

new oak

A lot of activity for the sunny and bright last day of February!